


Codes

by buttsbeyondbutts



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Captain America: The Winter Soldier Spoilers, Letters, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-03
Updated: 2014-08-07
Packaged: 2018-02-11 15:19:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2073114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buttsbeyondbutts/pseuds/buttsbeyondbutts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>To anybody else, it was a regular letter, a boring letter even. Letters were worth more than gold to a soldier but he and Steve had been playing army since they were kids. They were obsessed with it. They taught themselves all the signals and made up their own code, spelling out secret messages with the first letter of every sentence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_Dear Bucky,_

_I hope you’re doing okay and staying safe. Lost a couple of days of work so this has got to be short. Only a cold, don’t worry. Vernon even held my gig for me._

_Everybody says the wars going well and it’ll be over soon. You’ll be back here, romancing the girls and getting me out of scrapes before you know it. Old neighborhood doesn’t seem the same without you.  Until then, keep on fighting the good fight and don’t win the war till I get there._

_Yours,_

_Steve Rogers_

 

Bucky kept the letter in his breast pocket. He read it every night before he closed his eyes and in the morning before moving out. To anybody else, it was a regular letter, a boring letter even. Letters were worth more than gold to a soldier but he and Steve had been playing army since they were kids. They were obsessed with it. They taught themselves all the signals and made up their own code, spelling out secret messages with the first letter of every sentence.

Maybe it was a stupid, simple code but they were stupid kids. Besides, nobody would think to look for something as stupid as that and that made it brilliant.

Steve wrote him plenty of real letters, without any code. Bucky wrote back too. He knew they’d censor anything that gave aid or comfort to their enemy so he couldn’t bitch about the rain, or hunger or the stupid fuck commanders who actually got off on dead Germans. He also knew that he couldn’t tell Steve what he really wanted how much he missed him and wanted him pressed against his stomach to guard from the nightmares and how he couldn’t wait to kiss him again and make love so slow that it took hours, how he wanted to hold Steve down and make his toes curl, make him scream Bucky’s name and beg for release. Putting that shit in a letter would get him kicked out of the army and into a cell and maybe Steve would get arrested too. That’s why they bothered with codes. That’s why Steve swore up and down he was fine with Bucky bringing girls home and Bucky pretended not to see the hurt behind his blue eyes.

Bucky hated it but he could read it in the letter at least. Keep Steve’s love, a secret that he’d only whispered before, pressed close to his heart.

 

_Steve,_

_Listen, don’t go to work if you’re sick. Of course, everything’s fine here. Victory before Christmas, they tell me. Everything good at home, I hope._

_You should be getting my pay from the army soon. Only a few bucks but it’ll help you keep the apartment. Usually takes a while so let me know when they come, okay?_

_Tell everybody in Brooklyn Hey from me. Orders say we’re gonna move soon. Obviously, I can’t say where but it might be a bit before I can write again. Personally, I don’t care as long it’s quick. Usually, they got us sittin’ and waitin’ for hours before we can do anything. Never thought the army’d be so boring. Know you’d love it though._

_See you,_

_Bucky_

They found the letter in the wreck, clutched in Steve’s icy hand. When he unfolded it, after Fury explained about the seventy years that passed since Bucky fell and the plane went down, Steve sobbed like a child. He wasn’t supposed to be alive. He’d took the coward’s way out on the off chance that the nuns were right and he’d see Bucky again in hell. He hadn’t even tried to land that damn plane.

And now it was 2014 and his hands still shook with grief. Maybe he’d acclimated to the future, made friends and learned the new slang but that didn’t change the fact that Bucky was dead. He couldn’t stop the twinge of jealousy when he saw two men kissing on the street like it was no big deal. At night, his hands reached for a man that wasn’t there and the closest thing he had was a faded letter and a damned exhibit at the museum.

Bucky wrote the letter just before Steve became Captain America, just before the 107th was captured. It was the last letter he received from Bucky and he kept it with him. It was pressed against him in his shirt pocket, or in the inner one he’d personally sewed into the Captain America costume. It served as a reminder that, even if Steve was just a dancing monkey, he could still help the man he loved. It was pressed to his chest when he bent over that same man, simultaneously relieved and panicked to see him smile. To hear his name on those beautiful chapped lips.

They kissed, finally, when they were both alone in Steve’s tent. Bucky kissed him, still weak  from the march and Zola’s torture. “I love you,” he muttered against Steve lips, over and over again. “Steve, Steve, I missed you so damn much.”

And Steve said, “I thought you were dead, Bucky! I thought- fuck! I love you…” The last words were said in a small gasp as Bucky pushed him down onto the flimsy cot. It buckled under their combined weight but remained standing.

After a few abortive attempts to get his hand down Steve’s pants, and Steve telling him to get some rest, Bucky at last settled into his arms, his chin tucked over Steve shoulder. “You’re different…” He murmured into Steve’s neck.

“Different good or different bad?”

“Can’t put m’ arms around you like I used too,” Bucky said and Steve remembered how Bucky used to hold him with one arm round his stomach and another over his shoulders so Steve was practically enveloped in his embrace.

“Sorry,” he said.

“But you don’t get sick any more, do ya?” Bucky continued.

“No,” Steve shook his head, “Not yet.”

“Then it’s good,” Bucky said, He buried his face in the crook of Steve’s neck and breathed in deep. He fell asleep in a moment but Steve stayed away, afraid he’d wake to an empty cot and Bucky would be gone again.

Now he had a big bed, bigger than anything he’d ever had, and an apartment that echoed and Bucky was still gone. Steve woke every morning, his arms aching and empty, and read the letter so he could get out of that bed.


	2. Chapter 2

_Bucky,_

_It_ _was you on the bridge and in the carrier, wasn’t it? When I saw you… it was like seeing color for the first time. I missed you so much. Look, I don’t care what you did under Hydra’s command. Lord knows what they did to you._

_Forgive me for not looking for you hard enough back then. I know you shouldn’t but I need you, Buck. Now more than ever. Don’t leave me alone again._

_You’re staying safe, right? On the off chance you ever see this, I want you to know you can come home any time you like. Under whatever circumstance, I promise I am going to protect you this time._

_I love you,_

_Steve_

There was a book in a language he didn’t read waiting for him in his mail box when he finally returned home. The return address was his first Brooklyn apartment, which had been replaced by a department store in 1955.  Inside, there was no inscription, no hand written clue as to who sent it, just eighty three highlighted words. Steve wrote the first letters carefully on a piece of paper. It was gibberish. He called Natasha.

She called him back two days later. “What?”

“Can you get to D.C?” He asked, trying not to sound too panicked. The book sat by his bedside along with the coded message he couldn’t crack.

“For what?”

Steve took a deep breath. “I need a translation. Somebody sent me a letter in Russian.”

Natasha was quite for a moment. Then she said; “Steve, I’m not your personal translator. Go to the library or get on Google. I’m busy.”

Right, this was the future. “I’ll try… but I wish you’d come anyway. It’s important.”

“Everything’s important,” Natasha said. “I’m doing fine since you didn’t ask.”

Steve bit back a rude comment. He reminded himself that he was asking for a favor. Bucky wasn’t Natasha’s top priority. She didn’t need to find him the way a drowning man needed air. He took a deep breath. “Sorry. Is everything- what are you busy with?”

“Stuff, mostly,” Her voice had softened. “I’ll try to get back but it won’t be for a couple days.”

“Okay. Thanks, Natasha.”

“Get some sleep, Rogers,” She ordered, hanging up the phone.

Steve lay back on his bed and tried to follow her advice. He had waited over seventy years to see Bucky again, lost him twice and dragged poor Sam across two continents in search of him. At long last, Sam, possibly with the goal of getting a full night’s sleep in his own bed, suggested that if Bucky was trying to contact Steve, he would have no way to do so as Steve was gallivanting around Brazil looking for Nazis. The box was post marked for over a month ago, the first contact he’d had with Bucky since his oldest friend tried to kill him on a helicarrier. Now he had two days to wait for Natasha to come and translate.

He ought to have grown some patience ninety six years but Bucky had reached out to him and Steve needed to know what he said now. He went for a run and called Sam the moment it was close to a decent hour.

“You sure this is him?” Sam asked, after Steve showed him the book and explained.

“Yes,” not that he could explain how. Steve was well aware how desperate he must look to Sam and Natasha, and that it only scratched the surface of how desperate he was to hear from Bucky. Yes, his old address was a matter of public record and somebody might feel like distracting him or sending him a coded message for another reason. Hell, Bucky might want to distract him, especially if he still hadn’t remembered anything. Yet, he knew Bucky had sent the book, that Bucky was trying to communicate with him in some round about fashion. Steve knew it as surely as he knew he’d do anything to find him.

“Well, let’s see what google translate has to say,” Sam said with a yawn. “Remember, it’s not a perfect system but it’s a way to kill time before Natasha arrives.”

Steve nodded. Sam understood he needed to be doing something, anything to give the illusion he was getting closer to Bucky.

The words meant as little to Steve in English as they had in Russian. He wrote out the first letters anyway, hoping Bucky remembered enough of himself to use their old code.  He was disappointed, but not really surprised when the letters meant nothing either. The last letter Bucky sent him sat in the pocket of his hoodie. Steve brushed his fingers along the faded paper as Sam poured over the cipher. He’d been so terrified of accidentally destroying it that he had it framed after the battle in New York. It was miracle it had even survived the ice. Bucky’s writing was faded now, only legible to Steve’s eye, but he needed it with him, now more than ever.

“I wonder,” Sam murmured, without looking at Steve. He tore out another piece of note book paper and began to write out the alphabet in neat, capital letters, a new one on each line. Steve leaned over his shoulder.

“Did I ever tell you about my sister?” Sam asked, “That’s her there on the mantle, next to me in the fatigues.”

Steve glanced at a round faced woman with dreadlocks and her arm around a younger Sam. “She’s pretty.”

“Yeah. Anyway, Sarah used to keep a diary and me and Gideon always used to get into it, you know, like little brothers do. Anyway, she kept comin’ up with codes to keep us out of her business. Now she didn’t write anything interesting, just you know, typical teenage girl stuff about school and the boys she liked but it got to be kind of a game between us. She’d come up with the code and me and Gideon would crack ‘em.” He slid the paper over and Steve saw what he’d written.

 

A: Z

B: Y

C: X

D: W

E: V

F: U

G: T

H: S

I: R

J: Q

K: P

L: O

M: N

 

Steve stared at it. “That was the last one she came up with and it was bitch to crack because we were looking for the hard answer. Maybe your boy had the same idea.” Sam said.

He had, back in 1928. Steve sat down next to Sam and began to write underneath the nonsense message Bucky left for him. Slowly but surely: _r wl mlg ivnvnyvi srn yfg ivnvnyvi blf r zn tlrmt wl mlg ollp uli nv r droo ivgfim dsvm nb nrhhrlm rh wlmv_ transformed into: I DO NOT REMEMBER HIM BUT I REMEMBER YOU I AM GOING DO NOT LOOK FOR ME I WILL RETURN WHEN MY MISSION IS DONE

“Bucky…” Steve murmured, brushing his fingers through his hair. He remembered. Not everything but he remembered Steve and that was enough. More than anything he thought he’d have again.

“You okay, man?” Sam read over his shoulder, “Looks like it did the trick,”

“Sam-” Steve started, having almost forgot that the other man was there, “Thank you… so much- I-”

“Don’t worry about it,” Sam clapped him on the back, “When you see your boy, congratulate him on coming up with the same code as a sixteen year old girl.”

“Yeah,” Steve murmured, staring at the translated message. Bucky remembered him. Bucky knew who he was, remembered enough that he was coming back to Steve.

“What do you suppose he means by mission?” Sam said, “Weren’t you his mission?”

“Yeah,” Steve nodded. Specifically the mission was to kill him, “but I don’t think that’s it anymore. If Bucky wanted to kill me, I’d be dead.”

Sam leaned back, tilting his head incredulously. “Man, please tell me you’re not gonna do that whole puppy dog eyes as a defense strategy again. You are no good to anyone dead.”

“I’m not fighting Bucky,” Steve said, already tired of this argument.

“Didn’t say fight him, said you gotta defend yourself.” Sam said, “Look, we spent the last months hauling ass over Europe and South America looking for a hardened assassin. Now it looks like he remembers you… but not himself. We don’t know how The Winter Soldier will react to those memories.”

“Don’t call him that,” Steve said. Sam put up his hands, as if to show he was unarmed. Steve closed his eyes. “Sorry. I just- he contacted me. That’s gotta be a good sign.”

“It is,” Sam said, “It’s a great sign. I’m not saying you gotta write the guy off. I’m saying Bucky needs you, especially if you’re the only thing he remembers from his old life. You aren’t gonna be any good to him if you run yourself ragged worrying about this. You won’t help him by letting him kill you-”

“He won’t-”

“If he suffers a break- which you and me both know is likely- if the conditioning is too much, he will try to kill you, Steve. You gotta defend yourself because killing you might break him completely.”

***

Steve tried like hell to follow Sam’s advice. He kept himself distracted; volunteering at the V.A, listening to every loud, yelling band that Tony recommended and drawing as much as he could manage. Hell, he was even trying to learn Russian, although his tongue ached around the strange sounds. Bucky was always there though, just below the surface of his thoughts. If he didn’t force himself into absolute focus, his pencil slipped into crooked curve of his lover’s smile and he heard Bucky’s voice in songs about fast cars and loose women, saw his face in each wounded warrior. It took practice to be okay with day to day life, to ignore the fact that Bucky was out there somewhere and Steve wasn’t looking for him. When he finally went to sleep, when Sam or Natasha or even Tony, and that was how Steve knew it was really bad, insisted that he sleep, the truth of it was unavoidable. He kept the book and letters, coded and translated, by his bedside as proof that Bucky was alive and that he remembered Steve. Seeing them first thing in the morning, and the last at night, filled Steve with such relief and guilt that it made him choke like the asthma of a lifetime ago had returned.

Every morning, he prayed. Every meal and every evening, he murmured the same words over folded hands. “Please let him be okay. Keep him safe. Please.” No one, not even Tony, said anything about it. If they’d asked, Steve couldn’t have said who or what he was praying to. The religious lessons of his boyhood hadn’t prepared him for this situation. After all, he’d essentially died and lived again as had Bucky. Hell, Steve had met beings that people thought were gods, and what made a god if not people believing in them? To hear some people tell it, the deity of Steve’s education wouldn’t approve of Steve’s feelings for Bucky, let alone what they’d got up to in their shabby little apartment.

Steve needed help though. More importantly, Bucky needed help and Steve was willing to ask anything that would listen to get it for him.

DO NOT LOOK FOR ME

_Please be alright, Bucky._

I WILL RETURN

  _Please come back._

***

He did not make a sound when he slipped in the window, gently freeing the deadbolt to make his way. He knew he did not make a sound. He had not intended to so he did not.

Steve’s eyes opened anyway. They stared through the darkness and found him without a word. He did not move, ignoring every ounce of trained commanding him to flee or kill. They watched each other in the dark.

Then Steve spoke, half a breath below a whisper, “Bucky.”

Yes. That was the name Steve called him. Not James or Barnes, as read the files he found in the military and SHIELD databases, nor The Asset or Soldier as HYDRA had referred to him. Steve called him Bucky. He remembered it spoken in a fond sigh, shouted in a voice too high with irritation to be threatening, whispered tenderly on cold nights with Steve pressed close against him.

“I don’t remember him.” He had to tell the truth. He told Steve not to look for him because he couldn’t remember being Bucky, just Steve and how Steve felt about Bucky. He thought that if he found the places HYDRA took him, learned the names of his victims and the process through which HYDRA transformed Bucky Barnes into The Soldier, he could remember all of it. All he learned in his mission was that Steve would have been better off without him. Unfortunately, the few memories he had told him Steve would never accept this.

“That’s okay,” Steve said, exactly as Bucky knew he would, “I’m just glad you’re here.”

He said nothing.

Steve said, “I- are you hungry? Do you want something to eat?”

He shifted in his bed, sitting up to quickly. Bucky took a step back. Steve immediately stilled. “I’m hungry,” he said, in a soft, practiced voice. “I’m going to go make something to eat. Okay?”

Bucky nodded. Steve turned on the light. He was bigger, somehow, than Bucky remembered. He wore pajamas, simple gray t-shirt and shorts that fit him well. He remembered long underwear on a skinny body, billowing like a ghost on Halloween. He remembered it, crumpled on the floor when it got too warm and Steve striped it away in his sleep.

He followed Steve into the kitchen. Steve made sandwiches and slid one over to Bucky. Bucky looked down at the thin turkey between two pieces of white bread. Steve waited a moment than took a bite of his. Bucky mirrored him and they ate in silence.

Finally, Steve said, “I’m really glad you’re here, Bucky.”

Bucky chewed. Steve closed his eyes and continued. “I really- I was really glad to get your message. I missed you.”

 _I thought you were dead,_ The words, in Steve’s voice, sprang unbidden to his mind. Steve had bags under his eyes. He looked gaunt, a shadow of the man on the bridge.

“Are you well?” He asked.

Steve flinched, almost imperceptibly, but said, “I’m fine, Buck. I just- I missed you.”

“I am sorry,” he said.

“Don’t be! I’m just glad you’re here now! That’s all that matters.”

He stared down at the counter top, shiny black marble. “I failed my mission.”

“HYDRA-”

“Not HYDRA,” he growled. “My mission.” An emphasis of ownership he could never remember using before.

Steve drew a small breath. “What was it?”  
“To find Bucky,” he said, still staring at the black abyss, his own haggard reflection painful even in his eyes, “To remember being Bucky. I failed. I am sorry.”

“You are Bucky, though.”

He shook his head. “HYDRA destroyed Bucky to make me. There is nothing left of him but a few scraps of memory. I am sorry.”

“No.” Steve said firmly, without a second of hesitation. “I don’t believe that. You’re you.”

He stepped back, turning slightly away. The color suddenly drained from Steve’s face. “Don’t go!” He choked, “Please, Bucky, don’t leave me again.”

He shook his head. “I’m not him. I can’t be him, I’ve tried. I’m sorry.”

“Stay,” Steve implored. There were tears in his eyes. He wanted to brush them away with the curve of his thumb. He wanted to know if Steve’s skin was as soft as it was in his memories. His muscles had no practice in soft, tender touches. They might just as easily crush his throat and he could not risk that. “Please stay. I’m sorry. Whatever you want, I’ll do it! Just stay!”

He swallowed. His limbs were lead, heavy and useless. Steve was shaking. “I will stay.”

“Thank you,” Every part of him relaxed. “Bu- thank you.”

They lapsed into silence again. Steve looked so wan but he refused to go back to bed. Instead, he stared, his lips slightly parted, as if he were afraid the other man would disappear again if he so much as blinked.

"Do- do you want to?” He asked softly, “To be Bucky? You said you tried."

“I failed,” he said, “I can’t… so it doesn’t matter.”

Steve bit back and argument and to a forced, staggered breath, “but if you could… would you want to? If you could remember everything and be Bucky again, even after what they did you, would you want that?”

“I want-” Mostly he wanted it to be quiet in his head again. He wanted to stop the screams echoing through his memories and hold onto the good ones. He wanted to hold onto Steve.  He reached into his pocket. The worn gray hoodie had been lifted, still soaking, from a clothesline to cover his HYDRA uniform. Inside, his fingers brushed against a well worn letter, in Steve’s handwriting, with words for a man who was not him but who shared his face and his name. Steve had left it on that same kitchen table, in the vague hopes that Bucky would track him down. He had found it instead. He had stolen comfort from those words through the long nights that he tried to become the man who deserved them again. “I want to be what he was to you.”

“Buck,” Steve whispered. He reached out and pressed light tentative fingers to his shoulders. He did not flinch away. Steve’s fingers migrated to his neck, bare skin on skin contact. He was soft, just as Bucky remembered, and calloused at the same time somehow. “I love you. Whatever you’ve done, whoever you are, I will always love you.”

He should have pulled away. He should have run and never come back and let Steve mourn Bucky again instead of giving him a useless shadow. Steve’s words, his fingers, anchored him. “I’m not- Steve.”

“You’re you, Bucky.” Steve said firmly, “Whatever HYDRA did, they just jumbled you up… so you couldn’t recognize yourself. You’re still you. We just need to put you back in order… so you can see yourself, like I see you. You understand?”

“What if I can’t?”

“I think you can,” Steve said, “but if you can’t… if we can’t, it won’t change anything. I’ll be in love with you for the rest of my life.”

He let out a long breath, unaware that he’d been holding it in. Steve patted his neck and Bucky closed the space between them, brushing his lips gently against Steve’s. Steve gave a shuddering breath, his fingers clutching at Bucky’s long brown hair. “Bucky,” he sobbed softly. Bucky let his arms fall to his side but he did not pull away.

***

_Bucky,_

_I had to go to the store and I didn’t want to wake you. Looks like I’m out of milk. On the bottom shelf, you’ll find some bread if you want toast. Vegetables and fruit are in the drawers at the bottom of the fridge. Everything’s labeled so help yourself._

_You should probably stay in the apartment until I can figure out what to tell everyone. Only for a few days, I promise. Until we’re sure you’ll be safe, I think we need to keep it a secret that you’re here._

_Sorry, and I love you,_

_Steve_

FROM: Bucky

TO: Steve

Clint took me for drinks. Of course, can’t get drunk but wanted distraction. My therapist says it’s good to practice going out. Even if it’s just a little dive bar.

How is the mission? Only a couple days, right? Maybe just one? Every minute you’re gone, I get more worried.

 Can’t live at the bar, Steve.

 

_Bucky,_

_When you go out, pick up some cheese, please? Any kind as long as it’s shredded. Not unless you wanna spend twenty minutes shredding it yourself._

_Nat, Clint and Sam are coming over for dinner tomorrow, if you don’t mind. Anybody else you wanna invite? Figured we could do a movie night. Unless you’d rather go out or something? Could try a theatre, they’re really nice now. Know you’re trying to get more comfortable around strangers._

_Love you,_

_Steve_

 

_Steve,_

_I think we can quit with the codes. Really, the papers would go wild at how big of a dork you really are. Everybody still thinks you’re the star spangled man with a plan and you’re still a punk. My silence is not cheap, Cap. Even without inflation, you’re in hole for the rest of your life. Maybe you can pay me off with sexual favors, huh, Punk?_

_Been thinkin’ we should take a trip and see the  country. Ever been to the grand canyon? Really wanna fuck you outside._

_Think about it,_

_Buck_

**Author's Note:**

> Please review. Thank you.


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